Of Pidgin, Nigerian Pidgin Poetry, and Minority Discourses

Pidgin, for the layman, is a language formed from a mixture of several languages as the only option for communication among people from diverse and mutually unintelligible linguistic backgrounds. The growth of literature written in Nigerian Pidgin (NP) was not a sudden occurrence; it snowballed into a sizable avalanche. The eighties saw an upsurge in NP poetry, for example, “I Bi Somebody” by Tanure Ojaide appears in his The Eagle’s Vision ; Tunde Fatunde’s “Woman Dey Suffer” and “Bad Belle Too Much” both appear in Okike and The Anthill Annual , respectively. NP poems have not only appeared in magazines, journals, and anthologies, poets have also featured them in their personal collections. The real tenor of a charged minority discourse medium is effective with Ezenwa-Ohaeto’s NP poems.